and i was pulling at your heartstrings
by grandpa garbage
Summary: "One could not run from the past before it caught up and seized you in its fist, merciless." ― if Rin had any purpose in her life at all, it would be picking up the pieces of a mess some dead girl left behind. / read author note for story content warnings / i guess it's kind of rin/len central but like there are other ships,,,,


its me, back again, unfortunately,

um, uhhh. if this looks familiar, ive finally Taken that One Idea From 2013, Seized It Within My Sweaty Palm and Beat It Against the Rabbit Cage, so... yay? I posted a oneshot-ish of a wip-ish of a snippet-ish of the original idea/fic a while ago, with a similar sounding name (and the tagline is basically a rip off from it nyway). please disregard my author notes in that fic, it was a very dark and horrible time for me, and now im fine besides the fact i want to die but like im fine so dont worry.

of course, first we have a Disclaimer, where i tell you ive changed things from the original for the sake of just. being able to write this,

anyway ill ramble more about the premise of this (ugh) in the below somewhere, because I have an important announcement:

the entire fic is based around themes such as **suicide, loss/grief, self-harm, emotional abuse/manipulation, mental illness** , etc. the prologue in particular is **graphic and contains a suicide**. please don't read this if these things are triggering for you. thanke

* * *

 **and i was pulling at your heartstrings**

ღ

{ _so play me like a harp string_

 _and i'll keep coming back for more_ }

ღ

* * *

Rin had made a terrible choice.

She wasn't much of a person to volunteer to do things over summer break, but somehow, one of her teachers had persuaded her into helping clean the classrooms and tending to the school grounds.

" _I saw how hard you worked on the garden over the spring semester, Rin. Why not come back over break and help us with cleaning classrooms, too? We could use a keen eye like yours."_

She didn't know why, or how, the teacher put gardening and cleaning together as the same thing. In her own mind, they were _clearly_ different. Then again, she didn't have much a life outside of school, so it wasn't like she could say no.

Hence, she agreed to spend two weeks of her summer break at the school every day, wiping the walls and sneezing into dust piles.

Of course, she wasn't the only one who stayed at the school over break. Her high school was a 'music speciality' school, so it had dorms for kids who commuted far from home for the specific programs offered, and as a result was always open for students who wanted to use the music rooms for study. It wasn't uncommon to run across someone on school grounds.

(Corpses, however, was another story.)

Rin had been tasked with cleaning the empty music rooms on the Wednesday of the first week.

The day started fairly ordinary, and she managed to tackle three rooms before the afternoon. In retrospect, the floor with all the music-related classrooms was eerily silent - usually there'd be one or two people around practicing on their instruments, but that day… was quiet.

She didn't think much of it, off in her own little world of cleaning. She didn't think much of it as she walked down the echoey hallway to Music Room 3A, the key swinging around her finger and cleaning supplies dragging behind her.

When she reached the door of her destination, she was confused to find it was already unlocked. Assuming someone was inside, she knocked on the door three times, and upon hearing no reply, entered.

There were probably a billion other situations that she could've walked into at the time - a student masturbating? Fine, we all have needs. A student snorting a line of coke? It wasn't her business. Someone deep-throating a teacher? Er, well, it would've been less _traumatising_ , maybe…

But a dead body was, of course, the last thing to cross her mind.

Rin froze in the doorway upon spotting the tell-tale shade of teal that belonged to no one other than Miku Hatsune. She wasn't very familiar with her, despite being in the same grade, but knew her for being an overachiever; pretty, popular, talented, sporty, et cetera, et cetera.

Miku was slumped over, her face planted into the piano keys. At first, Rin assumed she was napping, like she stayed overnight in the music room and had fallen asleep. It wouldn't've necessarily been out of character, _but…_

As she closed in on her unresponsive classmate and the piano, she noticed an odd smell. It was bitter and metallic and familiar, settling in her nose and sinking to the pit of her stomach like a ball of lead. She slowed as alarm bells went off in her mind, eyes drinking in more and more of the situation unfolding before her.

The piano keys were slicked with muddy red fingerprints and smudges, something silver near Miku's face glinting in the afternoon sunlight. It was a razor blade, and it was also covered in red.

She'd stepped forward to touch Miku's back, then noticed the note on the piano, then noticed the puddle of blood under her greying fingertips. Her mind was overcome by a wave of confusion, then panic.

"M-Miku…?" she whispered. The room was dead silent.

She tried to listen for her breathing. But all she could hear was her own heart thrumming loud like a drum in her ears.

Rin knew. She knew but she refused it to be real for those first few minutes.

Pushing back the niggling urge to run away, she leaned forward to pluck the note from the piano's music rack. Her eyes scanned over the wobbly handwriting, reading into more than she probably should've ever known.

It was at the last line she read, her instincts finally kicked in.

 _I can't bother being alive anymore._

She dropped the note and sprinted from the room, screaming down the halls for help. She screamed and she screamed, down the stairs, down, down, down, until her legs gave way on the next floor and she collapsed in a heap on the ground. Her throat ached and bile burned her tongue, pieces of her mind cracking and falling out of her eyes.

A teacher had heard her and come running from the other direction, asking, "What's going on? What's going on?"

It was then Rin had to choke out the words that made the nightmare a reality, the words that changed so many lives forever.

"Miku Hatsune is dead in the music room."

* * *

ive planned about 10? 11? chapters of this so far, but the plan isnt close to being finished yet. is it bad im uploading before ive even completed the plan? yeah it is. will i upload past this sort of prologue thing? lol probably not but you never know. but if i Get At Least A Motivation, maybe you might see the end. at the moment i have an uh great big -7 motivation bc ive never. i dont. what a 'Complete' fanfiction. i dont know. sounds foreign like some 2015 shit. hmm.

to be honest ive written the first chapter as well, and originally this scene was going to be in the first chapter, but i was unhappy about how the first chapter was executed so i tried to rearrange it a little and this is what i got. i dont like prologues much (they seem so... pompous fkhfh) but here we are. but yeah, im still scratching my head over the first chapter and the quality of it, so if anyone has a spare... time... to do a beta... for this one cursed chapter... you know, like, my PMs are open, there's a note on my prof explaining more, i might as well staple it to my forehead and scweam at the top of my lungs,

(tho i genuinely expect no one to step up bc a) no ffnet vocaloid authors/betas like me for uh so many reasons but like thats just a sad pm story you dont ask for, and b) this website is dead. literally so dead. /throws hands. so in that case you may just get chapter one in its Full and Shitty glory, but its not as if all my other fics are the same ffdkdfjm)

oh yeah. important tho i doubt anyone has gotten this far through my boring a/n but. i Know there'll be at least (1) person who'll read this and be all "oh my god piri's vent posting again! she's such a horrible person! let's bitch about her in the discord chat!" and,,,, No, it's not a Vent Post, if you wanna know what a vent post is, slide right into my PMs sweatie ill give you the full experience.

BUT ANYWAY. this story is fiction. it's not based off anything or anyone. if anything at all, im using my own experiences and feelings and whatnot to help me write it, but literally that's what authors do, so. oh and it was inspired by like a book i read 5 years ago, called new girl. that's about it. no character is x person and no experience is from x time. if it seems like there are similarities, it's just merely a coincidence.

and uhh will get to updating my other stories... one day... when the plot bunnies strike you gotta feed em tho, so sorry this wasnt the update anyone wanted.

 **edit:** yikes i reread this and its really bad but anyway uh i fixed a quick mistake a reviewer, Lex, pointed out so yepyep. (thank you telling me!)


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